With America in the midst of a pot revolution, companies are lining up to jump on the medical marijuana bandwagon. But 99 percent of them don’t have the exclusive license from the federal government to commercialize a medical marijuana patent currently held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The patent, called “Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants,” was quietly filed in 2005 when scientists from the NIH found certain cannabis compounds had neuroprotectant properties, “for example, in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke or trauma, or the treatment of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia.”

“I think the [NIH wanted] a public-private partnership … the government does a good job of using taxpayer dollars to foster research and development, and NIH is the largest laboratory of its kind in the world in terms of scientific research and development,” Dean Petkanas, CEO of KannaLife Sciences told FoxNews.com. “They don’t want to develop drugs, but they’d like private interest such as ours to step up to the plate and say ‘We’re gonna take some risk with you.’”

In 2013, Petkanas’ New York-based company, which specializes in the research and development of plant-derived pharmacological products, obtained the license from the NIH’s office of Technology Transfer to bring a neuroprotective drug to the market. Read More…